The Saga of Finn Firebeard
by SkyforgeSteel
Summary: SPACE WOLVES! What happens if you're the last man standing? Blood, boltguns, werewolves and spaceships...
1. Finn

**_The Saga of Finn Firebeard_**

The rhythmic sound of another magazine clipping into place was as familiar to Finn as the pattern of his own hearts, or the scents of his brothers beside him. Sighting along his bolter for what felt like the thousandth time that day, he tuned out the stream of curses from Olaf as his brother's own weapon spat vengeance from behind their barricade. Olaf was the loud one, with an oath for every occasion. Behind Finn crouched Rokir, his own meltagun useless at long range, contenting himself with studying the holo-readout.

"Last wave incoming boys, then I think we can take a breather."

Amid the milling mass of forms Finn selected a target. As the explosive round detonated, the plaguebearer's putrescent features took on a brief expression of alarm, before its already decayed torso was blasted apart. The rush of joy at a neatly executed kill caused Finn to grin despite himself, displaying the lengthened canines typical in a marine of his age.

"Finn! Stop drooling and _get on with it,"_ Snarled Borri. The Alpha of their squad, Borri's voice betrayed his own excitement, high on the taste of battle like the rest of them. It was simply the way they were made. Even light-years from Fenris, its warriors still retained the hardiness and savagery of their people.

Rokir gave a whoop of glee as the daemon horde suddenly focussed its purpose and began a charge upon their position, hefting his meltagun to his shoulder. Finn set his bolter to auto, hearing as he did so the thrum of Borri's chainsword spitting into life. He could feel his augmented system flooding with combat stims, sharpening his reflexes and temporarily numbing his pain receptors. Beside him, ever-calm Leif silently reached for a frag grenade.

And that was when the blast hit.

"Damn it Finn, it's a waste, that's what it is. You're a good warrior. The chapter needs men like you..."

The Wolf Lord's voice, habitually a thunderous roil, trailed off into silence. He didn't need to say more. They both knew the inevitable consequences of Finn's decision.

"Sir. They were my brothers."

"At least think about it a little longer. There's a new Bloodclaw Pack joining the company soon, and they shall need a sergeant. A Grey Hunter of your experience still has a place here. With us. But the path of the Lone Wolf..."

"With respect, Sir, it is my choice."

From his raised granite throne the Wolf Lord scrutinised the man before him. Despite his recent wounds, Finn was back in his slate grey power armour, which boosted his height to almost nine feet. Its rune etched surface bore the scars and corrosions of countless conflicts. The iron stud above his right brow denoted five decades of service with the chapter thus far, although the Canis Helix woven into his genetic code kept his appearance and physique that of a much younger man. To look old amongst the Astartes, one had to bear witness to centuries of warfare.

But the Canis Helix had other powers also. The eyes that burned so defiantly back into the Wolf Lord's own were an animal tint of gold, betraying the beast that lurked under the skin of every son of Russ. The thick red mane, braided and hung with bone amulets and runestones, spilled onto the marine's shoulders but failed to hide the scars seared into his left cheek, still shimmering a deep iridescent blue. The scars of the wych-fire that had claimed the lives of his pack, all but one.

And what good is a wolf without his pack?

The crew aboard the Starfang got little rest that night, for an eerie howling echoed for hours through the corridors and control decks of the spacecraft. Piercing and desolate, it shredded the darkness with such pure agony that the Navigator's aide, torn from her slumber, knew not whether she wept for terror, or for pity.

And every marine aboard knew the danger of a son of Russ pushed to his limit, and prayed to the Allfather that the beast whose pain cracked the night would stay behind the eyes of the man.

_Day 27 _

Ice crystals had formed on his lips but he paid them no heed. The biting wind forced him to narrow his eyes. Finn snarled. How dare it make him do anything! He would ignore it. He strained his lids wider, the tears of moisture freezing on his face.

Through his blurred vision, Finn suddenly spied movement. The figure was even taller and broader than himself, with a loose swaggering gait. Olaf? No, Olaf was hunting beside him, as always.

The wind turned, and Finn's lupine nose caught the sour, unmistakable scent of troll. With a wild yell, he flung himself toward the creature, catching it off guard. The brawny, shaggy pelted beast stumbled once, but was easily strong enough to lift Finn off his feet and toss him into a snow drift. The surprise at being assaulted by its erstwhile prey quickly wore off, replaced by a foul-tempered aggression. It bellowed with rage, beating meaty fists against its chest.

Finn was winded, but immediately renewed his efforts. He realised that in fact the snow had blinded him, and this wasn't a troll at all, but Alvi, the one who had locked him out of the barracks his first night at recruit camp, and now he and Olaf were going to settle the score. He could hear Rokir and Leif cheering them on in the background, and saying to hurry up before Sergeant Borri got back.

Throwing himself into the brawl, Finn head-butted his opponent hard enough to see stars. He blinked, stunned. This was the point where Alvi had cried mercy, and the two were even. The troll, however, wrapped its limbs around Finn's torso and began to squeeze. Even with his reinforced bone structure, Finn may have been in trouble were it not for the power armour shell encasing his body.

With a snarl, he buried his teeth in the troll's jugular. The rich salty blood poured over his face and ran down his breastplate, filling the etched runes with a crimson stain and matting the twin braids of his beard. As the beast spasmed in his grasp, Finn snapped its neck, before letting the carcass fall to the ground.

"Haha, dinner is served," He took a mocking bow. "I hate to eat troll without Kih-Chupp sauce at least, but we'll have to make the best of it."

Pulling out a long combat knife he started butchering the troll, dividing the most edible cuts into five piles.

"…And there's no wood, so we'll have to have it raw-"He turned to face the empty barren expanse of snow. He was alone. That was fine. He would just sit right here until they all came back.


	2. The Sleeping God

It had been twelve days since they found the fallen sky god, but the people of the Bearclaw tribe were no closer to understanding the reason for his presence. Their chieftain, Anunn, would have been the first to claim their recent victories as reason, but somehow that didn't fit.

Yet a god was a god, wounded or not, and they could only assume that the Allfather was looking upon their tribe with benevolence. Personally, Mari thought the god's presence was a test. A hunting party had found him sleeping under days' worth of snowfall, his face and arms crusted in gore. The sagas told of the wolf blood of the sky gods, but Mari had never pictured the warriors appearance as quite so...feral. The jaws of the sleeper were almost a muzzle, the bones twisted beyond the structure of a human face. The cheekbones were sharp in a gaunt, hollow face, ears tapered, canines jutting from chapped lips. Most of his vast frame was encased in a strange metal, but the forearms were bare, with sequences of glyphs gauged crudely into the flesh, presumably by the long tapered claws breaking from the god's fingertips.

There was no clear reason for his unconsciousness either, no great wound that would have felled such a warrior. More, it seemed to Mari, as if he had simply ceased to live. Every day, as she dripped broth down the god's throat, it seemed to the woman that he sank a little further into the void.

Since Old Atti had died last winter, Mari, as his acolyte, had been hailed as the tribe's shaman, and so caring for the god was her task. Her own shack wasn't big enough for the full scale of him, however, so a new one was built on the outskirts of the camp. People would pass by and stare in from time to time at the red maned giant, but none dared stay long.

Some were bolder than others, however. The children, dark eyes like saucers, would linger and chatter to eachother about who, or what the giant was. Mari heard them making up stories, wild imaginings of the warrior's origin. Some said that he was the messenger of the Allfather, some that he was the Allfather himself. And others, that he was the wild nature of Fenris itself made flesh.

Tor and Hilde had wanted to cut a braid from his hair for luck, but Mari refused. She felt in her heart that if any disrespect was shown toward the sleeping god things would go very badly for the Bearclaw tribe. Soon after that occurrence she moved her own bedroll into the larger shack, the better to keep an eye on proceedings.

The shaman soon got into the habit of talking to her charge idly whilst he slept. Since her assumption of the role, the other tribesmen had distanced themselves from her, treating her with the awe and respect that they had Old Atti. Mari had envied him that respect whilst the old man had lived, but now it was hers by right she felt estranged. Her own mother would no longer hold her gaze, but look quickly away, bowing her head and scuttling off on some errand.

Mari became so used to the presence of the god that when the second arrived carried by the great steel eagle through the sky she felt only a little fear.

It began with a roaring in the air, like the heaving breath of a hundred mammoths. Lokk, on lookout, sighted the form in the sky first. The Bearclaw tribe ran for their axes as he yelled the warning, but when the shape grew nearer and the people could see that it was no firedrake but a metal construct they grew quiet. This was something unheard of. Such skyships did pass over every now and then, but never at this low level, and certainly never –

The metal bird slowed to a hover above the camp, and gently lowered itself to the ground. Mari muttered a prayer under her breath, and knew she wasn't the only one to do so. Up close, the great mass and obvious weight of the thing made even more incredible the grace of its descent. Such a creation appeared to defy the laws of nature.

Chief Anunn beckoned Mari to his side. He kept a calm exterior, but the shaman could sense his apprehension. Before he could speak, a panel in the side of the metal eagle slide open, and out stepped the second god. She was swiftly flanked by four more, clad entirely in black. They bore strange metal sticks that hummed with a tangible power, but the bearing and apparel of the female made it clear that she held the power amongst them.

The woman was tall, but not in the same way the red-maned god was. She appeared more human on first glance, but in her right eye socket was a smooth crimson gem that somehow seemed even more deep-seeing than the left living eye, which was a piercing pale blue. Her head was shaven apart from a strip of hair the shade of new snow that was spiked into a crest along the top of her skull, adding a handspan to her height. She wore an open leather cloak that billowed behind her like a second shadow over a lace-up breastplate embossed with silver curlicues. A golden sigil like a vertical bar with a skull at the centre nestled in her cleavage. The snow beneath her black leather boots hissed into steam as she strode toward Mari and Anunn as they stood, transfixed.

Mari could feel the aura of heat that surrounded the pale woman as the god smiled reassuringly and asked a question in a tongue Mari did not understand. When the tribesfolk did not react, other than striving desperately to show no fear before the gods, the question was repeated. When there was still no sign of understanding, she called back to the skycraft. Out flew what Mari at first took to be a bird, then with a thrill of horror realised was a skull. It was strung about with cables and whirring things, and in its own bone sockets were two red lenses like the god's own. It hovered over to the god, who spoke to it for a moment and ran her fingers around the back of the bone, then looped alarmingly toward Mari and Anunn. The shaman stifled a cry.

"Keep still girl!" Muttered Anunn. The rest of the tribe gazed on silently, spellbound. The floating skull let out a beam of amber light straight into the chieftain's eyes. It lasted for a moment, before flickering out again. Anunn seemed unscathed, so Mari tried not to blink as the same was done to her. The floating skull then whisked back to its mistress and administered the same treatment.

"Ah, that's better now," Announced the god, and Mari found she could now comprehend the words.

"What...what just happened?" She stammered.

"Simple temporal lobe perception reconfiguration. We call it a temprecon. Now you can understand me, and I can understand what the frak it is that you're saying."

"So what language were you speaking?"Despite herself, this arcane procedure held Mari intrigued. Anunn was probably still repeating the long words in his head, she mused.

"Only the Emperor's High Gothic. Still am, only now the likes of you can process it. And I can whatever tongue you happen to use here. Be that as it may, my name is Inquisitor Calcine, and you have something I want." A cold look entered the woman's blue eye, promising pain against any untruth.

"The sky warrior." Anunn met the steady gaze openly and without fear.

The god nodded.

"Show me."

Mari led the way to the overlarge hut where the armoured giant still slept. His face had got even more fleshless since they had first found him, and for the first time the shaman entertained the possibility that her charge could die. The thought troubled her more than she would have liked to admit.

"Thank the Throne he still breathes..." The female god said softly, feeling the scarred wrist for a pulse, before flicking a slender blade from her sleeve and drawing a drop of bright scarlet from the pad of his thumb. Mari cried out in protestation, but Anunn held her back. Quickly, the blood was pressed to a small black panel, which flickered green, before bringing up a series of iridescent glyphs.

_ ++CANIS HELIX DOMINANCE LEVELS 82%_

_STASIS OPTIMAL, FULL DESCENT IMMINANT++_

"Mericful Emperor..."The woman gasped. She leapt to her feat once more. "Maxim! Load him up, ASAP! Gun the engines, I want this Thunderhawk flying faster than shit through a taurox!"

Mari's head whirled as the black-clad stormtroopers sprang into action. Before a minute had passed her sky god was aboard the steel eagle and mounting the skyline, the roaring of its passing already an echo on the wind.


	3. The Ritual

"You are certain this is your wish, my Lord?"

"Yes, Iorek. We'll have what's ours, and the Warp be damned!" the Wolf Lord slammed his calloused fist against the wall. Cracks spiderwebbed through the stonework from the point of impact. "I know what it is I ask of you. But a Great Hunt only happens once in our lifetimes, and this quest would be the greatest of all, if we could but pull it off...This is a gift from Russ. We can't not act." The brawny warrior paced back and forth in the dimly lit chamber, as if to emphasise the stillness of the white haired man beside him. The Rune Priest's lined face was impassive, but his younger companion knew him well enough by now to sense a flicker of apprehension in his scent.

After what seemed like an age to the Wolf Lord, Iorek spoke once more.

"Then it shall be done. And if all the minions of Horus himself descend on us hereafter, then you, Thoromir Redrought, shall have it on _your_ head."

"And if they do, then I'll have the means to smite them, if we only pull this off. You know it has to be this way, old friend. Why else would Russ speak to me in sleep?"

The shaman sighed. "So be it. You have the heart?"

From a worn leather pouch at his hip Thoromir drew out the organ. The raw heart of a hundred year old Thunderwolf, knotted and crimson. The mass of muscle and sinew was as large as a troll's fist. Although cleaned of gore, the organ still held a visceral presence.

Iorek reached for the heart with both gauntleted palms. Setting it upon the chill obsidian slab before him, the Rune Priest laid several totems of stone, bone and crystal in a ring around it. Thoromir could see no clear pattern in their setting, but the weathered shaman considered the place of each carefully before placing it. The last item was a short knotted cord braided from three strands of hair, one black, one white and one coppery, still vivid after so many years. Thoromir recognised this last totem from legend; the braid Russ had worn in honour of the bond with his two wolf kin Freki and Geri.

Next Iorek drew forth an elk-horn jar containing a blue-black paste. With the mixture he marked second ring around the heart, this time in runes. Thoromir knew the marks for Fenris, Russ, Hope and the Warp, but there were many more that he could not comprehend. Despite his ascendant position within the chapter, some mysteries were left only for Asaheim's priests. The Wolf Lord noticed with a shiver that the twisting, angular markings inscribed over the ceramite of Iorek's armour had begun to shine with a faint, eldritch glow.

Suddenly, the shaman seized hold of Thoromir's wrist in an iron grip. The skin was bare; within the walls of The Fang Lord Redrought neglected to wear the heavy clawed gauntlets he favoured in battle. From nowhere the Rune Priest unsheathed a long, slim knife, the rasp of its scabbard sounding almost hungry. Its blade was pale, almost translucent, but swiftly stained a brighter hue as Iorek dragged it across his lord's wrist.

Thoromir stifled a snarl as the spurt of scarlet poured over the assembled alter. The wound clotted almost immediately, but the warrior's attention was instantly diverted by what happened next.

The heart, drenched in the bloody pool, convulsed and twitched. The severed arteries shivered, and the pool of blood began to dwindle. The heart drank until the stone was dry and the organ's fleshy surface was flushed and glossy.

The two rings surrounding the gory spectacle began to glow, the same luminescent azure as Iorek's ceremonial armour.

"So mote it be, in the name of the Allfather," The Rune Priest growled softly. Slowly he reached for the bloated heart and raised it to his lips.

The tearing sound as centuries-old fangs ripped into the organ almost seemed to echo in the stone-walled chamber as Thoromir's blood stained the white beard of the shaman.


End file.
